Animalia > Chordata > Sphenodontia > Sphenodontidae > Sphenodon > Sphenodon punctatusSphenodon punctatus (Tuatara)Synonyms: Hatteria punctata; Sphenodon guntheri; Sphenodon punctatus reischeki Tuatara are reptiles endemic to New Zealand and which, although resembling most lizards, are part of a distinct lineage, the order Rhynchocephalia. Their name derives from the Māori language, and means "peaks on the back". The single species of tuatara is the only surviving member of its order, which flourished around 200 million years ago. Their most recent common ancestor with any other extant group is with the squamates (lizards and snakes). For this reason, tuatara are of great interest in the study of the evolution of lizards and snakes, and for the reconstruction of the appearance and habits of the earliest diapsids, a group of amniote tetrapods that also includes dinosaurs, birds, and crocodilians. |
| Adult Weight [1] | 430 grams |  | | Diet [2] | Carnivore | | | Female Maturity [1] | 12 years | | Male Maturity [1] | 12 years | | | Gestation [3] | 11 months | | Litter Size [3] | 12 | | Maximum Longevity [1] | 90 years | | Nocturnal [2] | Yes |
|
| Name |
Location |
Endemic |
Species |
Website |
|
New Zealand |
New Zealand |
Yes |
 |
 |
|
| Amblyomma sphenodonti (Tuatara tick) | [4] | | Coprosma repens (creeping mirrorplant) | [4] | | Deinacrida rugosa (Cook Strait giant weta) | [4] | | Hemiandrus bilobatus | [4] | | Hemideina crassidens (tree weta) | [4] | | Leiopelma hamiltoni (brown New Zealand frog) | [5] | Warning (2): Undefined array key "controller" [APP/View/Helper/LinkObfuscatorHelper.php, line 79]Code Context
$controller = $url['controller'];
unset($url['controller']);
App\View\Helper\LinkObfuscatorHelper::link() - APP/View/Helper/LinkObfuscatorHelper.php, line 79
include - APP/Template/Taxas/taxa.ctp, line 1057
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1240
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1201
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 803
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 790
App\Controller\TaxasController::ntaxa() - APP/Controller/TaxasController.php, line 411
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 609
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 156
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 98 Mimopeus buchanani | [4] | | Pachyptila turtur (Fairy Prion) | [4] | | Pachyrhamma edwardsii (cave weta) | [4] | | Woodworthia maculata (Spotted Sticky-toed Gecko) | [4] |
Attributes / relations provided by ♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774 ♦ 2Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org♦ 3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109 ♦ 4FEEDING ECOLOGY OF THE TUATARA (SPHENODON PUNCTATUS) ON STEPHENS ISLAND, COOK STRAIT, G. Y. WALLS, New Zealand Journal of Ecology 4: 89-97 ♦ 5Anurans as prey: an exploratory analysis and size relationships between predators and their prey, L. F. Toledo, R. S. Ribeiro & C. F. B. Haddad, Journal of Zoology 271 (2007) 170–177 Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database |
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0
|
